About a billion years ago I was on a kinky women’s listserv with the most excellent Gayle Rubin, and there was a spirited discussion on the qualities of leather groups, and she posted the following mini-essay to the list. I read it and was gratified to see that my own budding experience with group dynamics was not uncommon.
Years later, a local leather group was having… er… growing pains, and I write to Gayle and asked her if I might be allowed to make a public post of her insightful email, and she graciously said I could do so.
Now, years later still, a local leather group is having growing pains, and I trot out Gayle’s wise words once more. Perspective, it is a comforting thing.
From: “Gayle S. Rubin”
Herewith some stray thoughts on SM groups.
Subject: Re: a question about membership groups
This is concerning the place of s/m groups in our lives.
One might use “membership groups” and “s/m groups” somewhat interchangeably here, and I think that opens replys to address some very different kinds of groups that have some functional differentiations.
These functionally distinct purposes in turn can be served both by membership and non-membership based organizations. The basic kinds of groups I see in the SM community include:
1. “gangs” or groups of friends, play partners, and co-conspirators. These are usually informal, and shifting, and have little structure. They only last as long as the interests of the participants are more or less in common, or until interpersonal conflict force a different constellation of social ties. These usually also rely on one individual or a couple or a small coalition of pals to maintain their activity level. They are mostly for fun and socializing. They also generally rely on institutions produced by other kinds of groups or structures such as the local clubs, bars, play parties, or organizations, in which to socialize and cruise, as their activities don’t generate or maintain such contexts.
2. More formalized groups whose purpose is to put on social events, such as play parties. These usually do rely on membership, and are more stable (although still subject to internecine conflict). Classics of the genre include the Chicago Hellfire Club, or San Francisco’s 15 association (both all male organizations). Because these are more enduring over time and have some intitutional stability, they are able to accumulate and maintain considerable resources with with to put on such events– such as relationships with sites, knowledge of the organizational necessities of such big events, equipment that can be stored, brought out and set up, and then returned to storage, some monetary reserves with which to meet expenses, mailing lists and knowledge of players, etc. Sometimes these party and social functions are also provided by businesses, such as bars, baths, and commercial sex clubs, but that’s another subject.
3. Special purpose organizations/institutions: these would include, for example, groups like NCSF which is politically focused, the LAM, which is archivally and historically focused, etc. These are more recent additions to our institutional repertoire and extremely important. Some will tend to be membership based, and others will have, over time, other organizational formats. But their functions are generally not primarily social.
4. What most people mean by “membership” or “s/m” groups– general purpose volunteer umbrella and intake groups that emphasize education and social functions– these would include groups like Eulenspeigel and Janus (mixed), GMSMA (gay men), or Outcasts (women, defunct) and Exiles (women, extant). The rest of my comments are in reference to these kinds of organizations. — end part I, see next installment for continuation —
These groups play an enormously important role in our communities, but also tend to have recurrent problems.
One such problem is that most of the members don’t participate in running and maintaining such groups. So the work of keeping them going falls on a smaller group of active members and officers. These officers and activists often feel like unpaid, unappreciated laborers whose efforts are not recognized by the inactive “membership;” the inactive members often grouse about how things ought to be or don’t much care as long as someone is taking care of business.
My perspective on this matter is colored by many years of having been one of the activists, and being frustrated by a lack of participation by much of the membership; now I’m a happy civilian and am delighted to get my newsletter and have the option of dropping into an occasional program without having to worry about booking the room or putting out the damn chairs.
But having put in so much time doing so, I feel entitled to my retirement; I still nurture some annoyance at those who year after year don’t lift a finger to keep institutions we all rely on afloat.
In one group that I’m part of, at business meetings we often end up talking about “what the membership wants”. And I’m not confident that we have any idea what the general membership wants. As a way of well, that’s part of the structural problem of those who do maintain these groups– they can speculate about what the membership wants, but it is often damn difficult to find out. I personally think that most of what the membership wants is for someone to make sure the newsletter comes and the programs happen and for them not to have to do anything for this to occur. Sometimes an activist individual or faction will have an agenda which is justified by an appeal to “what the membership wants,” with little verifiable knowledge thereof.
Some members will always want the moon, the stars, love, happiness, adoration, perfect “safety, and a steady supply of play partners– it is difficult for them to grasp that these are not part of the services they can reasonably expect. Or they have some pet thing they want that they assume should be granted– that all the members are 100 percent pure dyke, no bisexual experience allowed, or that refreshments will always be vegan, or that there will always be refreshments, or that they can bring their pet biological boys to women’s events no matter what, or …. well, fill in pet desideratum. So individual members often have unrealistic expectations that they will get something they want, not realizing that such groups have to cater to a more diverse crowd and can’t meet everyone’s idiosyncratic expectations.
And indeed, such presumptions — that one can have all one’s needs met by such groups, or that everyone will be an ideal play partner, or that one’s needs are simply so reasonable they should be met, or that one can get perfect emotional safety in such environments– are, IMHO, completely unreasonable and the leadership should not spend two seconds giving them the time of day.
Such needs are better pursued in more private or more select environments– ________’s gang, for example, could indeed be a group in which everyone wanted to play with everyone, or in which invitations were based on desirability. This is appropriate in small groups of friends, but not possible in a more public membership group, which can only maintain a place in which there is a larger pool from which people can then choose with whom they want to socialize more intimately.
(Another factor for me is, this group has open meetings, so approximately half the attendees at any meeting are not members. Why not? What does membership give to those women who are members? What do women want from the group, who are not members?) well, that has to do with decisions made in how this particular group was set up.
Other groups try to limit participation of non-members in some way so that members get some extra benefits. For example, Outcasts used to allow members to bring guests, which meant that visitors had to at least know a member to attend a program; members got a lower door fee; and members got the newsletter. If there is no structure of incentive, then “what members” get is a good question. I’m generally content to know that I’m helping to maintain some kind of public space for SM women in town; many others tend to want something more tangible.
What do you look for in an s/m group?
What do you get from the well, I think that what is often overlooked about these general purpose membership groups is that they provide an extremely important social function, particularly in lesbian, women’s, and mixed gender contexts where there is a very rudimentary community infrastructure.
That is to say, bluntly, gay leather guys have less need of them in the sense that there are so many other institutional supports for gay male leather/SM community and social life. There are leather bars, and publications, and many social clubs and party groups, as well as a constant round of events such as title weekends and theme weekends (such as the recent bear convention here in San Francisco). So GMSMA does not have the job of providing a minimal space in which to meet other men with similar interests; for that there are many other commercial businesses and organized social clubs and events. GMSMA has the luxury of providing education, a different kind of social interaction than that available at bars or sex clubs, for example, and doing political activist work.
At the other extreme, women who want to party with other women have a completely different landscape and a different set of problems in that there is little else in the way of established geographic or social territory. For example, San Francisco still has, to my knowledge, no women’s leather bar. There are only a couple of women oriented major national events a year, if that; and we have few if any real dedicated women’s SM publications.
Groups going back to Samois, and including Outcasts and Exiles, have had the job of providing pretty much the only reasonably reliable, ongoing, point of entry or re-entry or face to face contact for local SM women. It is the paucity of other institutional formats that make such organizations so essential. They provide a way for new women to find out what’s going on and make friends and find play partners; they provide a way for people to come back in and check out what’s happening if they’ve been dropped out for a while; they provide some way to disseminate and receive updated information on parties, housing, contacts, equipment, services, leather friendly businesses, etc.
Until there is considerably more institutional development, proliferation, and differentiation for SM women, the lack or failure or absense of such general purpose groups will create problems in maintaining community life.
Nonetheless, the activities of maintaining such groups tend to be rather thankless.
Typically, at the early stages of the group, there is excitement and even competition over leadership positions; as they mature, the excitement fades and responsibilities seem to fall to fewer and fewer individuals. Finally, such groups tend to fold, leaving a vacumn, which is then filled by a new group that can start the cycle and be more viable for some period of time.
If that vacumn did not exist, such groups probably would not exist. But the vacumn is real enough, and experiencing it tends to motivate new group formation and inspire new committment, at least for a few years. It usually turns out that at least one thing worse than the boring old group (or the drama damaged old group) is not having any group at all.
What group you belong to? What do you think is missing? If there’s a local group and you’re not a member, why not? (Or: What would you want from a group, if there was one in your area?) What have you liked or disliked about groups you’ve joined in the past?
Well, see all of the above!
What I’ve disliked is this cycle of disinterest, the tendency of members to expect too much from such organizations, the tendency for individuals to use them as stages from which to enact their personal psychodramas (My mantra: keep them in the dungeon, don’t bring them to business meetings), and the tendency for folks to underestimate the importance of such organizations and to assume that they will always be there no matter how much apathy or melodrama is inflicted upon them.
I like groups that are well maintained, provide basic services (newsletter, programs, ongoing events at which one can make contact with old friends and new members), and have a mimimum of melodrama and factionalism. It is also important that groups have enough leadership toughness to marginalize rampaging egos and pathological personalities, and prevent users and criminals from taking over, dominating the domain, and subverting the group to meet some other agenda.
The latter are far worse even than apathy, are even more lethal to group survival, and if not controlled will eventually ruin the organization.
What have such groups done for me?
They have, in the absense of a more developed commercial and institutional framework for women’s SM life, provided the basis of community for over two decades. They have provided information, communication, technique, contacts, the possibility of social life, a way to meet people, a pool from which to draw friends and partners, and sometimes platforms from which to perform political work of other kinds for kinky folk.
Without them it is difficult to know how I would have ever run into many of the individuals who have enriched my life as friends, lovers, and play partners; how I would have encountered so many of the events and institutions of the leather social calender; or how I would have functioned as an SM community and political activist.
Such groups don’t provide friends, or give people lives, or make people happy; but they do provide pools of opportunity from which one can draw to construct lives and build sustaining networks of people who matter.
my 2 cents… Gayle
